Money and the Turning of the Age

[GliderGuider]

Charles Eisenstein is a cross-discipline thinker with a deep fund of knowledge in economics, ecology, energy, systems theory, anthropology and the role of spirituality in human life. I continually recommend his remarkable online book The Ascent of Humanity for a big-picture look at how humanity painted itself into this corner. The excerpts below are from the final article of a series on money and economics he posted on Reality Sandwich, a site known more for a spiritual than an economic perspective on life. Nonetheless, the writing stands on its own merits, and Eisenstein joins the ranks of people like Joanna Macy, Sharon Astyk, Carolyn Baker, the Pachamama Alliance and others who see clearly the reasons for the unraveling of our modern industrial experiment.

Money and the Turning of the Age
by Charles Eisenstein

As the economic meltdown proceeds to its next phase, we begin to see the unreality of much that we thought real. The verities of two generations become uncertain, and despite a lingering hope that a return to normalcy is just around the corner -- in "the third quarter of 2009" or "by the middle of 2010" -- the realization is dawning that normal isn't coming back.

We like to scoff at primitive cave-dwellers who imagined that their representations of animals on cave walls could magically affect the hunt. Yet today we produce our own talismans, our own systems of magic symbology, and indeed affect physical reality through them. A few numbers change here and there, and thousands of workers erect a skyscraper. Some other numbers change, and a venerable business shuts its doors. The foreign debt of a Third-World country, again mere numbers in a computer, consigns its people to endless enslavement producing commodity goods that are shipped abroad. College students, ridden with anxiety, deny their dreams and hurry into the workforce to pay off their student loans, their very will subject to a piece of paper with magical symbols ("Account Statement") sent to them once every moon, like some magical chit in a voodoo cult. These slips of paper that we call money, these electronic blips, bear a potent magic indeed!

How does magic work? Rituals and talismans affirm and perpetuate the consensus stories we all participate in, stories which form our reality, coordinate our labor, and organize our lives. Only in exceptional times do they stop working: the times of a breakdown in the story of the people. We are entering such times today. That is why none of the economic measures enacted so far to contain the crisis have worked, and why the current stimulus package won't work either. None go deep enough. The only reform that can possibly be effective will be one that embodies, affirms, and perpetuates a new story of the people (if we can agree on one). To see what that might be, let us dig down through the layers of failing realities and their relationship to money.

....

Clearly, the TARP program and other bailouts are also an exercise in perception management, but on a deeper, less conscious level. Because what is money, anyway? Money is merely a social agreement, a story that assigns meaning and roles. The classical definition of money -- a medium of exchange, a store of value, a unit of account -- describe what money does, but not what it is. Physically, it is now next to nothing: slips of paper, bits in computers. Socially, it is next to everything: the primary agent for the coordination of human activity and the focusing of collective human intention.

The government's deployment of trillions of dollars in money is thus little different from its earlier deployment of empty words. Both are nothing but the manipulation of various types of symbols, and both have failed for an identical reason as well: the story they are trying to perpetuate has run its course. The normalcy we took as normalcy was unsustainable. It is unsustainable on two levels. The first level is the debt pyramid, the exponential growth of money that inevitably outstrips the real economy.

....

Usury-money is the money of growth, and it was perfect for humanity's growth stage on earth, and for the story of ascent, of dominance and mastery. The next stage is one of cocreative partnership with earth. The Story of the People for this new stage is coming together right now. Its weavers are the visionaries of fields like permaculture, holistic medicine, renewable energy, mycoremediation, local currencies, restorative justice, attachment parenting, and a million more. To undo the damage that the Age of Usury has wrought on nature, culture, health, and spirit will require all the gifts that make us human, and indeed is so impossibly demanding that it will take those gifts to a new level of development.

The article is fairly long, but its rewards are ample.

[zazen]

1. wow--I've been looking for a web site like this. Thanks!

I'm only just scratching the surface, but I've been looking for something that tries to stay as emotionally authentic and motivated as possible w/r/t the insights of Buddhism while being equally honest about the pick-your-apocalypses (apocalypsai?) seemingly unravelling before us. And which is as rigorous as possible--not another 2012 web site authored by Angelic Beings being channeled through quasi-therapists who have awfully written books to sell.

This looks very promising. Thanks so much for the heads up!

[GliderGuider]

3. I'm glad you like it.

There's a bit of 2012 on there, but a lot of it is at a much higher level.

With metta,
Bodhisantra

[Warpy]

2. People who are alarmed at the crash of the old system

really need to ask themselves how much the old system benefited them and how much it limited them.

In my case, the benefit came far too late but the limitations have lasted my whole lifetime. I'm happy to see the old system crash. I hope it takes a lot of oppression with it.

It's just got to get a whole lot worse before that is allowed to happen.